A Gallifreyan Christmas Cake
by imnotokaywiththerunning
Summary: For Classic Who Secret Santa. Evelyn and Six baking. As with everything that involves the Doctor, it does not go to plan.


**A/N This is my contribution to the Classic Who Secret Santa on Tumblr. It's a gift for marauders-on-gallifrey who asked for Evelyn and Six baking. I hope they are in character. I've never written for these two before.  
Enjoy! And Merry Christmas!**

* * *

 **An Unexpected Visit**

"Oh dear," Dr. Evelyn Smythe muttered under her breath at the chaos before her. "What's the Doctor done now?"

Evelyn had been on her way to her kitchen for a cup of tea, but that seemed out of reach now. The room was a disaster area and by the looks of it, it could only be attributed to the Doctor. Pots and pans were strewn across the floor, a white substance she assumed, hoped, was flour dusted almost every surface, and a strange bright yellow goo looked to be bubbling in the sink. Gingerly, she stepped farther into the room to see if anything had been permanently damaged.

"Evelyn!"

"Oh!" Evelyn jumped and put her hand to her chest to try to calm her racing heart at the Doctor's sudden appearance behind her. He was smiling proudly at her beneath his mop of curly blond hair, oblivious to her fright. He straightened his hideously garish multicolored coat and side-stepped past her to walk towards the sink where he turned on the water faucet. The yellow goo began to rinse down the sink.

"Are you sure that's safe?" Evelyn asked as soon as she'd found her voice. Whatever had been in the sink didn't look very environmentally friendly. It had looked radioactive. "That stuff isn't going to contaminate the water supply or anything, is it?"

"Oh relax, Evelyn," the Doctor smiled smugly at her. "It's just trumpberry jam. Perfectly harmless. In fact, it's quite tasty!"

Evelyn only raised an eyebrow in disbelief, muttering, "If you say so."

Her sink cleared of the trumpberry jam, the Doctor turned to look at her expectantly. He was smiling enigmatically at her in silence. Evelyn didn't know what he was on about and merely smiled back at him. After a few minutes of stilted silence, the Doctor sighed loudly. "Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Well," he said drawing out the word dramatically, "aren't you going to ask me why I'm here?"

Evelyn laughed aloud. "Well, I assumed it was to destroy my kitchen which you seem to have done a fine job of!"

For the first time, the Doctor realized the state of the kitchen. He looked chagrined for a small moment before brightening again. "Nevermind that. I'll clean it up later." Here he puffed himself up proudly to pronounce, "I've come to celebrate Christmas with you."

"And that involves this?" she asked waving to the mess surrounding them, unimpressed.

"Yes."

Evelyn merely shook her head and walked out of the room. She was getting too old for the Doctor's nonsense.

 **A Gallifreyan Christmas Cake**

Evelyn had tried her best to ignore the various noises coming from her kitchen and focus instead on the sweater she was knitting. She was working on the sleeves, which always gave her a bit of trouble if she didn't pay attention to what she was doing, but after the fourth shouted curse from the Doctor she gave it up as a lost cause. Sighing, she put her work aside and decided that she had better go and help the Doctor with whatever it was he was doing before he blew them all sky high.

To Evelyn's immense surprise, her kitchen was now virtually spotless. There wasn't a single thing out of place to tell of the chaos that had reigned before. The Doctor himself was bent over the oven to peer inside. He had removed his multicolored coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves. He was so engrossed in his baking that he didn't hear Evelyn come into the kitchen until she was right beside him peering into the oven as well.

"What is it?" Evelyn couldn't see clearly what exactly the Doctor was making. It looked vaguely like a cake, but she couldn't be sure. It was moving in the heat unlike any cake she had ever seen before.

"It's a cake. Surely even you could see that," the Doctor drawled earning himself a poke in the ribs. "It's from an old recipe book I found in the TARDIS. It was pre-Rassilonian, I think. It's supposed to be a cake for special occasions so I thought Christmas was the perfect time to try it."

Evelyn still wasn't convinced that the _thing_ growing by the second in the oven was a cake. "So it's supposed to move like that, is it?"

The Doctor leaned closer to the oven door to get a better look. He furrowed his brow, "I'm quite sure. Let me check the book." He swiveled on his heel to grab a tattered old book covered in odd circular ruins Evelyn assumed to be circular Gallifreyan. He quickly thumbed through the book until, "Ah! Here it is!" He glanced between the book and the cake before snapping the book closed. "Yes, it seems fine."

"Really?" Evelyn asked skeptically. The Doctor knew a lot about a lot of things, but he had never struck her as a baker. "Can I have a look at this recipe?"

"No," the Doctor said sharply, placing the book out of Evelyn's reach. "Besides it's in Gallifreyan. You couldn't read it."

"Couldn't the TARDIS translate it?"

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Why would the TARDIS translate Gallifreyan? _Think_ , Evelyn." He shook his head and began to lead Evelyn out of the kitchen. "Don't you have a sweater to knit? I'll look after the cake and you just go relax."

"Oh no, you don't!" Evelyn scolded him. "I can't relax knowing you're in here making a mess of things!"

"Fine," the Doctor sighed. "I'll set a timer and then come sit with you so you know I'm not destroying things. Better?"

"Better."

 **Evelyn Saves the Doctor**

The Doctor had started a fire in the fireplace turning Evelyn's tiny sitting room into quite the cozy space. Evelyn was finally able to put her full attention on her sweater since the Doctor was sitting in her other armchair casually flipping through his recipe book. Occasionally he would make some noise of disbelief, but in general, he was an agreeable companion. Soon the only sounds in the room were the clicking of Evelyn's knitting needles and the faint crackle of pages turning.

The loud boom from the kitchen caught them both by surprise. The Doctor leaped to his feet tossing his book aside. Evelyn's knitting dropped to the floor with a clinking that could barely be heard over the sound coming out of the other room.

"Doctor!" she cried in shock raising a hand to her rapidly beating heart.

The Doctor was already bounding across the room towards the smoke billowing out of the kitchen. "Stay here, Evelyn!"

Not one to be told what to do, Evelyn took a few calming breaths and then walked more cautiously after the Doctor. The smoke made it hard to see but she could hear the Doctor grunting in pain and what she dearly hoped was not the growling of a monstrous beast. The smoke was beginning to clear enough for her to see properly and she peered around the corner of the doorway to see what had happened.

The acrid smell of burnt pastry assaulted her senses. The Doctor was brandishing a wooden spoon towards a large brown mass oozing out of the open oven door. As she got closer she saw that it had what looked to be a sort of face with glowing bright yellow eyes and mouth, and two stubby arms waving menacingly. The odd creature seemed to be throwing bits of itself towards the Doctor resulting in smaller versions of the creature growing from the scraps wherever they landed. The Doctor was using the wooden spoon to try to bat the smaller creatures away, but there were too many of them. One landed on his arm and he cried out in pain before he swatted it away. Smoke rose from his arm where it had landed.

"Doctor!" Evelyn cried from the doorway unsure what she could do to help.

"Evelyn! Get the book!" The Doctor yelled to her successfully dodging a volley of mini monsters. He stamped his foot down on one of them only to have it engulf his shoe. Evelyn watched in horror as he shuffled around to until he had surrendered the shoe to the small smoking monster. He was beginning to become overwhelmed. "Evelyn, the book!" he cried again when she had failed to move.

"Right! Back in a jiffy!"

She ran back into her sitting room searching frantically for the small cookbook the Doctor had been reading earlier. She couldn't see it on his armchair and a cursory look around the floor was equally fruitless. She huffed in frustration at the Doctor carelessly throwing things about. Hearing the Doctor cry out her name again, she bent over to look underneath the chair. "Where are you?!" she groaned in frustration. Blindly, she stuck her hand under the chair groping wildly for the book. "Got you!"

She ran back to the kitchen with the book in hand to find the Doctor now contending with not one but two amorphous monsters. The original mass was still steadily moving out from the inside of the oven. The smaller pieces had come together to create another monster that was sliding slowly across the floor to where the Doctor was cornered.

"I've got the book," Evelyn called across the room. "What now?"

The Doctor now wielded a lid from one of Evelyn's cooking pots as a shield. "Throw it!"

"Throw it?" Evelyn couldn't see how that would help their situation and added sarcastically, "at what? The monster? What's it going to do? Read?"

"Don't be ridiculous!" he scoffed. A piece of a monster came perilously close to his head before he batted it away with the spoon. " _I'm_ going to read it. Maybe it can tell us what went wrong."

Evelyn looked at him in disbelief. She knew what had gone wrong. The Doctor had decided to use an old recipe that he had had no idea about what it really was. He had thought that he knew everything, as usual, and threw caution to the wind. And it had resulted in some sort of cake monster invading her kitchen. She could kill him!

She threw the book toward the Doctor but misjudged her aim and it fell wide of the mark knocking a half-empty teapot off of the kitchen table. The liquid still in the cup fell across the floor onto the second monster. It let out an inhuman scream as it tried to scramble away from where the tea touched it. It dissolved into a useless unmoving goo. Evelyn and the Doctor stared at each other in shock.

"That's it! Tea!" the Doctor exclaimed with glee as the original monster renewed its attacks with rage. "They dissolve in tea. Evelyn make some tea!"

Still reeling from the sight of a slowly dissolving cake...thing, Evelyn could only stare blankly at the Doctor until his words finally sunk in. "Where exactly am I supposed to make tea? There's an angry cake monster holding my kitchen hostage!"

The Doctor was either ignoring her or he couldn't hear because he didn't answer. Evelyn suspected it to be the former. He didn't really expect her to wade through this mess of flying burnt cake to make a pot of tea, did he? She looked around for her tea kettle and sure enough, it was on the stove top directly above the angry creature. There was no way on Earth she was going to get to it through the hailstorm of flying cake pieces. Suddenly an idea struck and she turned hurriedly from the room as the Doctor called for her to come back.

Down the short hallway, she threw open the door to her bathroom. She grabbed the glass she kept by the faucet and filled it with water. Carefully so as not spill the water, she made her way back to the kitchen and threw the water on the nearest clump of monster pieces. They hissed before stilling into the disgusting brown goo like the other one. "Yes!" she triumphed and leaped to the kitchen sink to start throwing glass after glass of water onto the monster still in the oven. It screeched horribly as it began to melt. Soon it was no more than a soggy mess of cake leaking across the floor.

"There, that should do it," Evelyn sighed in relief as the last of the pieces were enveloped in the water. Her kitchen was a nightmarish mess now, but at least she wasn't about to be eaten by a cake anymore.

"Quick thinking, Evelyn," the Doctor haughtily praised her. "I thought water would do the same as the tea. I'm glad you thought the same."

"Oh you did, did you?" Evelyn asked raising her eyebrows in feigned astonishment. "Was that before or after that thing ate your shoes?"

The Doctor looked down sheepishly at his stockinged feet before smirking back up at her in defeat. "Yes, well… Well done, Evelyn."

 **Back to Normal**

"That's the last of it, I think," the Doctor said pouring the last of the burnt cake into the bin. "I'll just take this out to the TARDIS. Wouldn't want it to fall into the wrong hands."

Evelyn smiled at her newly cleaned kitchen. The Doctor had done a fine job of cleaning it. Again. You almost couldn't even tell that they had been fighting for their lives only a few hours ago. The only signs were the busted oven door and the lingering smell of burning cake. It would take some time to get the smell out of her flat, she thought ruefully.

"How about some tea?" the Doctor asked walking into the room adorned in his brightly colored coat and a new pair of shoes. Evelyn watched him from where she was sat at the table as he prepared it. He set the kettle on to boil and then turned to look at her across the kitchen. "Pity about the cake. It would have gone nicely with the tea."

Evelyn chuckled at his pouting. She stood up from her chair to walk to her sitting room. "There's a chocolate cake in the fridge. Cut us a slice."

The Doctor brightened at this news and bounded to the refrigerator in search of the promised cake. "Oh, Evelyn, you are a marvel."

"Bring it all into the sitting room when the tea's finished," she called over her shoulder.

 **Evelyn Saves the Doctor...Again**

The Doctor and Evelyn were settled again in her sitting room after their tea and chocolate cake. The Doctor had looked sheepish as he had brought in the tea and Evelyn suspected he'd had more than one slice while he was waiting for the kettle to boil. She hoped he'd left some for her later because she wasn't going to be able to bake anything else until her oven was set back to rights.

"That was a delicious cake, Evelyn," the Doctor gushed.

"I'll teach you how to make it one day," Evelyn smirked. "And it might not even try to eat you!"

"Ha ha," he drawled not at all amused. He set his teacup aside and reached into his coat pocket to withdraw the old cookbook. He flipped through it to find the page with the disastrous cake recipe. "You know, I think I know what I did wrong. I think I might have added too much cinnamon. Next time-"

Before the Doctor was aware that she had moved, Evelyn had snatched the book from his hands and thrown it into the fire where she watched it burst into satisfying flames.

"Evelyn! That book was thousands upon thousands of years old!" the Doctor cried in shock.

"Yes, and it should have been burnt thousands upon thousands of years ago," she told him picking up her knitting again and ignoring his spluttering about ancient books. "You can thank me later."


End file.
